Zen and the Art of Apocalypse — Carey Groner

Blending Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with Cormac McCarthy's propulsive The Road, this is the story of a battle-scarred survivor on a desperate post-apocalyptic road trip, across a landscape ravaged by a deadly virus, racing against time to deliver a possible cure to a scientist in California, if California even still exists… 

Imagine a cross between The Road and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and you'll enter Cary Groner's page-turning vision of the near-future, when the world has been ravaged by a lethal virus and only the young have survived. Cities and infrastructures have been destroyed, countries no longer exist as they once did, and the natural world has taken over the landscape in surprising ways. Our narrator, a former caretaker of a Buddhist monastery in Colorado, has been tasked with bringing a potential cure across the treacherous landscape, with a hitman on his back, to a scientist in California -- though he doesn't know if California still exists. Along the way he's accompanied by a clever raven and an opinionated cat, with whom he converses. It's a page-turning adventure -- both a quest and, ultimately, a love story. The wisdom of this imaginative and inventive novel stays with you long after you've turned the last thrilling page.